I’ve been hanging around with Barb Ash a lot. I published Sqinks. I painted quite a bit. I’ll break my doings into two posts: “Wandering” and “Wondering.”
Barb is a photographer, as am I, and we enjoy working on pictures together, each using their own camera, but helping each other see. Barb is better at focusing than I am. This is her shot of sunset at Moss Landing. We were down there for a whale watching trip, spending three nights while we were at it.
Made a visit to the Asian Art Museum in SF. I like this guy, he makes me laugh. D.T. Suzuki wrote a book called The Zen Doctrine of No Mind.
Amazing demon sculpture from, I think, Tibet.
Down in Santa Cruz with Barb, near the Boardwalk. I love the zigzag shadow.
Barb by the chimneys in Moss Landing. Looking kinda cyberpunk. This used to be a fuel-burning power plant, but now it isn’t. I think they do something having to do with solar power there.
I never tired of the living mandalas of yuccas and such succulents.
Asian art museum: Ganesh the elephant god. I’ve always loved this guy.
Halloween pumpkins with Barb. The one on the left is mine; I carve him the same every year.
The Fall of the Rebel Angels, Acrylic on canvas, 40″ x 30″. October, 2025
I love Peter Bruegel’s painting, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, a fantastical and realistic masterpiece that shows about a hundred misshapen creatures tumbling down from heaven. I was working on my novel Sqinks, in which a zillion of odd aliens are swooping around. And I thought of Bruegel’s painting, and I tried to paint a copy of it for inspiration. Quickly I realized a precise copy would be far beyond my skills. So I went semi-abstract, and filled a canvas with gauzy figures in shades of green, pink, yellow, blue, and orange. One of the figures is indeed modeled on a specific Bruegel fallen angel. This one is halfway up of the left, and resembles a bursting ripe seed pod. I only outlined the figures in the lower part of the painting. I see those guys as the creatures who are allowed to remain in heaven, and the evicted ones are the gauzy figures in the upper half. You might think of them as farther away. And the red arc might be thought of as edge of a cliff, or the rim of a planet.
A pan shot of my office. I always have a bunch of my recent paintings on the walls. But I’m always making new ones so they don’t get to stay up all that long. I especially like that one in the middle.
Eye Candy. Acrylic on canvas, 40″ x 30″. June, 2025
This is based on a photo taken from a plane over the California region called the Delta. In this one, I was interested in the delicate gradations of yellow among the slightly different fields. And I emphasized the islands within the oxbows. To liven them the image, I filled the islands with circles. Wanting to make something that’s fun to look at. Eye candy! Somewhat foolishly, I painted over this a few weeks later, because I was desperate for a fresh canvas, and didn’t want to wait a week for a new one to arrive in the mail.
Mannequins in empty store windows are always creepy and surreal. Especially if they don’t have heads!
Att the annual St. Mary’s School Fair in Los Gatos. A saucer ride! I guess that once a bunch of people are inside, it spins around. Not for me! But I love the way it looks.
My Shadow. Acrylic on canvas, 24″ x 30″. July, 2025
Here I am in my studio, that is, in my parched back yard. It’s two in the afternoon of a full-on sunny day. Thei summer-nuked lawn is yellow clay, with dead straw and few green blades. I’m holding my phone camera with both hands, which is why you see my elbows sticking out. I’m photographing my lower legs, my shoes, and the dark shadow of my body. My pants have lots of paint on them. The articulation of the legs, shoes, and shadows is a bit tricky but, once you know what you’re looking at, it seems logical. At least to me. I have a PhD in an arcane field knows as Mathematical Logic. The other day I was talking with my friend Barb, and I was making some outrageous claim, and I insisted, “It’s simple logic.” And then I had to stop and think, and I admitted, “Well, it’s mathematical logic.” Which may not the average person’s notion of logic at all.
The source photo for My Shadow. Part of painting is learning what things to leave out.
I think this one of the greatest photos I ever took. With my Leica. Walking down a street on Bernal Hill, it might have been on the Fourth of July.
In Chinatown with Barb. We like hanging around in North Beach these days. We’ve found a cheap hotel with free parking, and we like to dance in the bar/club called the Saloon. Supposedly the oldest bar in San Francisco. They have good live music. I love these old guys playing their own instruments on Grant Street.
Rudy & Penny’s twins, Jasper and Zimry, set off for college this fall. I remember their baby years and childhoods and teens so well. And now I’m nearly eighty. How time rolls on.
Barb shot of me in North Beach. She doesn’t like to crop, and maybe she’s right. We like the hills and the Vic houses of North Beach. And of course I like the sone’s history as a beatnik / artist enclave.
What I call a “Rudy picture.” Shapes and silhouettes and 3D.
Another Rudy picture from North Beach. I like that little wall around the base of the tree.
Flukes of a whale on our whale watching trip to Moss Landing. We saw about 30 whales over a couple of hours, they were right offshore. I was rereading Moby Dick around this time, and I liked it in that book when one of the old whalers, before going to bed, says, “I’m going to turn flukes.” This would be an expression, you understand, for a whale diving down deep.
We spent a couple of nights near Point Reyes Station in a motel next to Tomales Bay. So peaceful.
Now continue to the Wondering post, up next.